


Lost and Found

by toastweasel



Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: Gen, based on her little speech, holtzman is queer as hell fight me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-29
Updated: 2016-07-29
Packaged: 2018-07-27 13:14:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7619503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toastweasel/pseuds/toastweasel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Physics is the study of the movement of bodies in space and it can unlock the mysteries of the universe. But it cannot answer the essential question of what is our purpose here- and to me the purpose of life is to love, and to love is what you have shown me. I never thought I would have a friend until I met Abby, and now I feel like I have a family of my own, and I love you. Thank you.”</p><p>A little introspection on Holtzmann's end of movie speech.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lost and Found

**Author's Note:**

> The second Holtzmann gave her little speech at the end of Ghostbusters, I knew I had to write this. Not sorry at all. Holtzmann is Queer As Hell.

* * *

_"Physics is the study of the movement of bodies in space and it can unlock the mysteries of the universe. But it cannot answer the essential question of what is our purpose here- and to me the purpose of life is to love, and to love is what you have shown me. I never thought I would have a friend until I met Abby, and now I feel like I have a family of my own, and I love you. Thank you.”_

* * *

When Jillian Holtzmann was in her first semester of college, she had taken Intro to Queer Theory; it was a three credit humanities elective, the only thing not covered by her extensive amount of transfer credits. It was neither physics, engineering, nor nuclear science, but as a budding baby lesbian away from parents and all other hovering adult figures for the first time in her life, she had loved it. Jillian Holtzmann loved queer theory, loved queer history, loved the sense of finally starting to piece together a place in the universe. She loved it more than she could possibly say and wanted to explore it more—the problem was she loved physics, engineering, and nuclear science, too. She had to choose; STEM or Queer Theory.

She lived STEM—she had lived and breathed it since she was old enough to comprehend what she was reading. She sketched and dreamed and studied—she got a full ride to college. The hum of machines, the pain of solder blisters, and the smell of burnt plastic got her going. Science, engineering, math—it was what she loved more than anything.

Her beloved STEM classes tore her away from Queer Theory, to opposite sides of both campus and educational philosophy. She tried to pick up an LGBT Studies minor, but the class schedules never matched up and she was forced to choose. Queer Theory was engaging and explained so many things, but it also felt like something that would stick around forever. STEM was an ever-changing race that Jillian Holtzman could not stop running. She had to keep going—she could only just keep up; sometimes she was ahead of the curve, other times she lagged behind. She never stopped, though, because deep in her bones she wanted to win it, although what ‘it’ was was never really clear. With some regret, although not very much, Jillian Holtzman left Queer Theory behind and threw herself face first into STEM.

Holtzmann’s time as a Nuclear Engineering undergraduate was filled with hardcore classes on calculus, physics, and thermodynamics—not to mention engineering classes that made the Architecture majors across campus scream in fear. She kissed girls in the library stacks at three in the morning before finals, half drunk on lack of sleep and her fifth Redbull in ten hours. She survived four years on Pringles, Oreos, peanut butter eaten straight from the jar, the odd granola bar, and uncountable bags of fast food.

The only hobbies she had time for were the (working) model arc reactor she had shoved under her lofted dorm room bed—which she rolled out every time a girl came over and used it to impress them—and the endless inventing that goes on in the engineering labs after hours. In her cross-campus treks she always passed through the art quad; more than once she stopped to look at the outdoor displays of sculpture from the metal class. It looked fun, interesting, and different--she looked for a hole in her schedule for next semester, but no dice. Metal sculpting, like Queer Theory, remained a road not taken. She simply  stuck with welding non-sculpture things, although she would occasionally sketch a sculpture in the margin of her notes during a particularly boring lecture.

When she’s graduated, with full honors and fifteen patents thank you very much, there was no time off for Jillian Holtzmann. She flung herself into her Masters and PhD—finally shit she wanted to study, not just stuff she was forced to go through the motions of—and before she could scarcely breathe she was hired to tinker to her heart’s content in the basement lab of the Kenneth P. Higgins Institute for ways to catch ghosts (and unknowingly save the Universe). Building proton packs was almost like metal sculpting—everything had to fit together just so, the perfect weight to balance ratio that kept the wearer comfortable but also kept generator from getting too hot and frying the computer parts of the pack. She always had better ideas after the field tests, and her free time was spent improving the packs and their other ghost gadgets, making them lighter, stronger, more slime resistant.

Between that fateful first semester freshman year LGBT Studies class and becoming a Ghostbuster, Dr. Jillian Holtzmann simply never had time to pick up a Queer Theory book and read up on what she’d missed. She wanted to, but saving the world the the lives of her friends took priority to satisfying personal interests. There was no such thing as bedtime reading for Holtzmann.

That being said, as she sat with her little band of misfits at a table in a Manhattan gastro pub, she was reminded suddenly and vividly of her Queer Theory professor. She had stood in front of the blackboard with a piece of chalk, but never actually wrote anything; Jillian, despite not taking notes, hung on to every word. This was before Dr. Gorin, and so her attractive Queer Theory professor had her full attention.

_“The notion of the found family,” her professor had said in a Scottish burr that was far too attractive to be allowed, “is important to the queer community because for a long time, the act of being queer excluded one from one’s family. Being Queer itself was seen as the rejection of the nuclear ideal—because we were unable to form our own nuclear families, we created our own ones out of friends and lovers who filled the void of lost parents and friends. We see the formation of found family’s in things like drag houses and collectives. That being said, a Queer person’s found family are the people in the lives of Queer individuals who we choose to spend time with--not because they are bound to us by blood but instead share their time and attention with us because shared interests, talents, and experiences.”_

At the time, Jillian had paid her professor’s words little credence, despite adoring her. She had it on reliable account that she needed no one except herself. Parents got in the way, adults in general mucked things up, and others of her age were either unreasonably cruel or uninterested in her strange behavior and stranger interests. She had known from a very early age that she was much better going at the world alone.

But then Abby had found her, took her weirdness in stride and, while Abby did not exactly match her weirdness in spades, Abby had enough strangeness of her own to keep things interesting. And then Erin had tumbled into their basement lab, and joined the crew, and then Patty had joined up, and the next thing Dr. Jillian Holtzman knew, she was saving the world with three amazingly talented women.

During college, girls had come and gone. Acquaintances, never friends until Abby, had also come and gone, generally more interested in her notes and communal suffering than actually befriending her. But these women were different—none of them complained about her odd hours, or the fact that she filled the station with 80s pop. Erin always smiled when she broke into a dance party, and more times than not Patty would crack up at her jokes. Nobody commented on the fact that she put Sriracha on pretty much everything, and Abby only told her off for drinking energy drinks when there were so many empty cans around the workshop that Kevin stacked them up and bowled with them and a stress ball. She had a lab with friends that she could pretty much do whatever the hell she wanted to in it—and get paid a fairly hefty sum for it, too. It was pretty close to perfect.

She realized with a jolt, in that little Manhattan gastro pub, that she had inadvertently acquired a found family of her own. Now that she had it, albeit not in the way anybody had expected it, she was happy. Not in the happy-go-lucky façade way that she put up for the world—she was actually genuinely happy. It mattered less to her now that while her parents had been more than happy to have a scientist for a daughter, they were less than pleased to have a lesbian. Now, instead of parents, Holtzmann had three friends (four if you counted Kevin) to make her laugh and to make them laugh. She had three (or four) people more than happy to accept her; weirdness, orientation, and all. Not to mention she had these people to share adventures, interests, talents, inventions, and experiences with.

She had thought for so long that she could go at the world alone—but until that very moment she did not realize how fortunate she was to not have to.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to getsetpirouette.tumblr.com and dr-jill-holtzmann.tumblr.com for the beta work. Hope you enjoyed it!
> 
> First Ghostbusters fic, but I have a feeling there will be a lot more. Feel free to come flail at me about Ghostbusters on tumblr. toastweasel.tumblr.com. Cheers!


End file.
